Everything you need to know about mummies

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A new exhibition at the British Museum sheds a revealing new light on the Ancient Egyptian practice of embalming

Here is a show to lift the bandages from your eyes. The British Museum’s latest exhibition presents a host of fresh discoveries about the famously fascinating and perennially intriguing burial practices of the Ancient Egyptians.

Archaeologists, in their quest to understand the purpose and significance of mummification processes, had formerly to unwrap the winding sheets that preserved the cadavers and in so doing destroy them. Now radical technological advances allow us to peer inside without causing any damage. X-ray studies and CT scans allow us to conduct a virtual layer-by-layer unpeeling of the preserved corpse.

Ancient Lives, New Discoveries presents

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Mummy of the priestess Tamut, c900BC

May 20 2014 Trustees of the British Museum

Mummy of the priestess Tamut, c900BC

May 20 2014 Trustees of the British Museum

A CT scan shows the brain of the mummy in blue, the tool left behind in green